Murphy's Law for beginners

Everything is growing away strongly on the plot now, I'm just waiting impatiently to start harvesting stuff. I was so nervous earlier in the year that my carefully chitted potatoes weren't going to come up that I actually dug one up to see if anything had happened (of course it had). Now I'm a little more laid back - patience is a virtue. Not that I should have worried of course. I carefully prepared the soil, diligently chitted the specially-sourced seed potatoes in my spare room, acclimatised them to the outdoors, painstakingly planted them at the recommended spacing and depth, added fertiliser to the soil and weeded and earthed up...

Meanwhile, amongst the kitchen scraps, left alone, forgotten, discarded and with no attention whatsoever, I now have 3 healthy potato plants and a spire of brocolli sprouting luxuriantly from my compost heap!

First early spuds are in

My first row of early potatoes went into the ground at the beginning of April, during the couple of days warm weather we had. They're called Orla and are supposed to take 10 weeks to produce potatoes. I hope that the following weekend of snow and frosts have not had too much effect, since the shoots are not showing above ground level yet and I don't expect they will just yet. I've also managed to put them in the wrong bed according to my plan, that'll teach me for trying to be clever.

Also new to the plot this week:
- A garden bench - John next door said it was no use bringing seats down there until we'd finished all the work...
- Four rosemary bushes, partly to use for cooking and partly as a neat end to the plot.

I see young plants are available in the garden centres at this time of year, and as the cold weather has stopped me getting many seeds going I might be forced to cheat soon. Mind you, I will be filling up my greenhouse with seed trays in the next week or so. Already on the go are some marigolds to keep the flies away, and look pretty of course.

Spud delivery

My expensive scottish seed potatoes are here. (see Wise Mike's Tip No.1 August 2007). Ordered in November and not actually that expensive. Moog thinks: "They aren't food."

I have two varieties, Orla (First Earlies to get me going) and Sarpo Mira (Maincrop). Both are advertised as being resistant to blight, particularly the Sarpo. I got these because I lost all my patio-grown tomatoes to blight last summer. Also there are signs up all round the allotment site warning us allotmentalists to look out for blight as it has been a problem, so hopefully these two varieties will stand up to the job. The supplier sent me a note to apologise for how small the tubers were, this being due to high demand for blight resistant varieties. If they're that popular then Moog thinks I'm on the right track.

For now, they're quietly "chitting" in my spare bedroom. You're supposed to put them the right way up, how you're supposed to tell at this stage I don't know, so I will wait and see what happens. Moog thinks once they start to sprout, then we'll know which way up they're supposed to be.

Moog found a useful guide on how to grow potatoes on the Thompson and Morgan website, which is also where I placed my order.